StephenKMackSD's Blog

David Brooks has three political/ethical thoughts: the evil of big government, rampant immorality and a dysfunctional politics. Those could be considered his only thoughts, endlessly reinterpreted and continually re-framed . One could place them under the heading of decadence, of the falleness of man, to put it in theological terms as the Christian Evangelicals and their allies would favor. But might we, his readers, posit another alternative view of our present quandary, as the failure of Big Capital to deliver on the putative promise of the Financial Reform of 1999? Was the repeal of Glass-Steagall and its economic consequences a net plus or a net minus? We the live in the economic ruin of many broken promises, of failed ‘reform’ and the bad faith of thinkers and policy advocates like Mr. Brooks. How can we take seriously the nostrums of a thinker who led us down the wrong road, however he garnishes his latest opinion piece with a bit of ideologically congenial science? All in the name of the moral reclamation of values lost, morality reclaimed and a banished repudiated decadence.

Political Cynic

As a reader of The New York Times it becomes harder and harder not to feel that you are continually reading propaganda, especially if your a regular reader of David Brooks and his meditations on politics and other matters of moment. The challenge for me has become less onerous as I have found an ally in the NYTimes eXaminer and their REALITYCHEX commentator Marie Burns. Ms. Burns with aplomb and style takes apart the the ‘thought’ of various columnists at the paper of record, based in a refreshing dose of realism, an absolutely novel notion in this age of cronyism and political climbers of all stripes. Here is the link:

http://www.nytexaminer.com/category/columns/realitychex/

Political Observer

It is quite easy to view The Daily Beast, edited by Tina Brown, as a repository of gossip of various descriptions: gossip about celebrities, movie stars, politicians,literary figures even journalists and the intersections where all these beings meet and interact. Leslie Gelb in his essay of December 23,2011 provides the reader with his special variety of gossip as history. It is entitled The Forgotten Cold War: 20 Years Later, Myths About U.S. Victory Persist, in which Mr. Gelb casts himself as an objective observer and commetator of American Cold War policy, while demonstrating as the essay unfolds, that he was one of it’s intellectual servants and implementers. His resume,alone, gives lie to this almost comic pose: this is just a part of the entry devoted to Mr. Gelb on Wikipedia,

“Gelb was director of Policy Planning and Arms Control for International Security Affairs at the Department of Defense from 1967 to 1969, winning the Pentagon’s highest award, the Distinguished Service Award. Robert McNamara appointed Gelb as director of the project that produced the controversial Pentagon Papers on the Vietnam War.

He was diplomatic correspondent at The New York Times from 1973 to 1977.

He served as an Assistant Secretary of State in the Carter Administration from 1977 to 1979, serving as director of the Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs and winning the Distinguished Honor Award, the highest award of the US State Department.”

Here are the cast of characters, I mention only three of the major political actors, leaving the walk ons and mentions as mere rhetorical filler: Reagan,Bush the Elder,Gorbachev or Gorby in the amiable chatter that Mr. Gelb indulges in, while carefully refraining from characterizing any other historical actor by nickname, perhaps a sign of contempt for Mr. Gorbachev, one can only speculate. The one point of interest in this essay that is touched upon is Mr. Gelb’s interview with Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, a figure that could have been a central character in an essay that might have been more revelatory, of certain historical realities,expressed with candor by a ranking member of the Soviet military and inner circle. A living vivid presence surrounded by the sepia tones of Mr. Gelb’s memories. Predictable in it’s pedestrian observations, while attacking, but only mildly, the Cold War triumphalism of the Reaganites. Perhaps we will have to wait a little longer for a candid and coherently organized meditation on the implosion of the Soviet ruling apparatus, from one of that now rare species of policy intellectuals called the Kremlinologist? I mention just one possibility, Strobe Talbott.

Political Observer

David Brooks has an exalted notion of himself as thinker and arbiter of public taste, and public morals. Now, that statement is hardly news but he makes concrete that self- appointed status in his Sidney Awards. Named after Sidney Hook, the Cold Warrior and former Left Wing thinker who preached the gospel of the moral/political bankruptcy of his former comrades, as reason for depriving them of their constitutional right to free expression and participation in the life of the Republic. All this under the rubric of accusations of disloyalty and subversion of that very state; aided and abetted by fellow travelers Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Reinhold Niebuhr. All neatly rationalized under the banner of manufactured Cold War hysteria, a perfect fit with the political philosophy and self-concept of America's paterfamilias, Mr. Brooks. I would not seek to judge his selections as either good or bad, but would caution any reader to consider the source of the recommendations of these winning essays, as reflective of a certain set of prejudices, of uncongenial predispositions, to understate the case. The links are below:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/20/opinion/brooks-the-sidney-awards-part-i.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/23/opinion/brooks-the-sidney-awards-part-ii.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

American Litterateur

Just in case you missed Leslie Gelb’s column of December 14,2011 column titled Leslie H. Gelb on a World in Crisis—and What Obama Should Do, a breezy little travelogue of the world’s problems likely to manifest themselves in 2012, or a meditation on the dangers facing America and his proposal for how the president should deal with them. Although the tone of this article borders on the rhetoric of gossip, it is almost lighthearted, to say the least an inappropriate stance given the gravity of the subject matter. Perhaps you might even judge this essay as the most recent incarnation of the magazine cliché of the prognostications of an expert, although Mr. Gelb is more descriptive than prescriptive. The cast of characters is large, even rather unwieldy: Putin, Russia, Israel, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Europe, China, Peru,Occupy Wall Street, and Newt Gingrich. Mr. Gelb manages to say nothing very revelatory in this essay. Now I bring this up as relevant to Mr. Gelb’s latest in Newsweek,dated December 19, 2011 entitled Joe Biden On Iraq, Iran, China and the Taliban an interview with the Vice President. To call this interview brief, stilted and baldly edited is generous, but it manages to be a bookend to last week’s World Crisis essay as an example of journalism as practiced at Newsweek and The Daily Beast under Tina Brown. Newsweek, that old competitor of Time, both relics of another age in American Journalism and the putative vision of Henry R. Luce, has reached the end of the age of print and must transition to the internet,however falteringly. Now, is the question of the lack of seriousness of Mr. Gelb as journalist and seer, and purveyor of an ethically vacuous opinionating, wedded to the question of the success or failure of the Weinstein/Diller/Brown triad, and their bid to redeem their heavy investment in a journalism of an age passing away before our eyes? Or is Mr. Gelb just another neo-imperialist hack and apologist with emeritus status? These questions remain tantalizingly open.

Political Cynic

In a solumn ceremony in the U.S.Senate, today, Carl Schmitt was given the signal honor of postumous American citizenship, in recognition of his inspiration and example to American Lawmakers. In speeches from the podium Senator Senile War Hero gave fulsome praise to the work of Mr. Schmitt during World War II, followed by Senator Cornpone on his relevance to American Law in the Age of Terror. Senator American Likudnik was the final speaker, who led the entire senate,except for eight notorious dissenters, in the Horst-Wessel-Lied at the end of the ceremony.

Political Cynic

“Of all the major Republicans, the one who comes closest to my worldview is Newt Gingrich. Despite his erratically shifting views and odd phases, he continually returns to this core political refrain: He talks about using government in energetic but limited ways to increase growth, dynamism and social mobility.”

In the opening paragraph of Mr. Brooks essay he demonstrates that he learned many things from his mentor William F. Buckley Jr., but the most obvious was always to couch your arguments within the confines of the assertions of an expert,or someone who speaks with the voice of authority, that somehow makes it more believable, than some mere weak argument on the part of an opinionator compared to that of a Pundit, with a capital P. Even while some readers could consider these opening sentences as carrying a certain ironic,comic potential. In his essay titled The Gingrich Tragedy he compares his own philosophical positions to that of Mr. Gingrich . One might just compare Mr. Brooks’ petite bourgeois Conservatism and its fealty to propriety and conformity wedded to Free Market economics to the polemics of Mr. Gingrich’s vulgarized Social Darwinian world view, but his history of political incompetence, even malfeasance, as demonstrative of his being unsuitable for the Presidency is barely touched upon, except for a slight scolding. And he mentions not at all, the thought and practice of male privilege as being under question, as it remains unaddressed in this essay, perhaps they see eye to eye on that all important question. But the question of Mr. Gingrich’s support of an activist federal government in the making and enforcing of policy is the great impediment that renders Mr. Gingrich unsuitable for the office of President. Here is Mr. Brooks vivid description of Mr. Gingrich:

“… Gingrich, who seems to have walked straight out of the 1960s. He has every negative character trait that conservatives associate with ’60s excess: narcissism, self-righteousness, self-indulgence and intemperance. He just has those traits in Republican form.”

The words narcissism, self-righteousness, self-indulgence and intemperance could be a description of Mr. Brooks, as well,- of course, when he is not at his best. Mr. Brooks is in every way the respectable paterfamilias sounding a warning against the precipitate Mr. Gingrich, while maintaining every bit of his dignity, his pride and most important of all his status as a respectful dissident within the Party. His concluding sentences are worthy of full quotation:

“But how you believe something is as important as what you believe. It doesn’t matter if a person shares your overall philosophy. If that person doesn’t have the right temperament and character, stay away.”

Political Observer

Here is a recent essay by Kimberly and Fredrick Kagan in the Washington Post titled A new mirage in the Iraq desert, two prominent Neo-Conservative thinkers and policy experts, indeed, Ms. Kagan was a contracted employee of the U.S. Government involved in policy planning and implementation. But even more impressive is the fact that these two intellectuals were part of the concentrated propaganda offensive, that The Bush Restoration and The Party of War, and the Democrats and Republicans that make it up, waged in support of an attack of another sovereign nation, in violation of international law, perhaps, a matter of little concern to The Kagans, as prelates of an indigenous American political necromancy. In the United States of Amnesia this information is of little interest, as is the heavy irony of this long quotation:

“Iraq is a signatory to numerous treaties and a member of international organizations obliging it to respect human rights, ensure due process of law, and refrain from arbitrary or political detentions. Responsible nations should insist that Iraq demonstrate its commitment to those obligations. The president should tell Maliki in no uncertain terms that Washington will hold him to account in the international arena if Iraq does not.”

Or should we, in the cultivation of a necessary political honesty, simply label this call for ‘respect for human rights’ , ‘ensure due process of law’, and ‘refrain from arbitrary or political detentions’ as the necessary window dressing of maintaining political respectability, at all costs: in the interest of maintaining the political/ethical fiction of the virtue of Neo-Conservatism, and of the necessity of the National Security State as re-engineered by it’s operatives, The Kagan’s?

Political Cynic

http://www.diynetwork.com/chris-grundy-bio/bio/index.html

Here is a podcast from the FrumForum of August 13, 2009, an interview with Professor Kabaservice that is impressive in its depth of historical, political analysis,his impressive erididtion, that he displays to great effect. I just read his review in the New York Times Book Review of December 11,2011 of Buckley:William F. Buckley and The Rise of American Conservatism by Carl T. Bogus, but let me quote in full the revelatory first paragraph:

“William F. Buckley Jr. was an immodest man with much to be immodest about. Not only was he the high priest of the modern American conservative movement and the founding editor in chief of its leading intellectual publication, National Review; he was also a gifted polemicist, best-selling novelist, sesquipedalian speaker, television star, political candidate, yachtsman, harpsichordist, wit and bon vivant. Small wonder that I once saw him nod approvingly when a tongue-tied freshman referred to his 1951 autobiographical best seller as “God as Man at Yale.” He performed his many roles with such panache, and such obvious enjoyment of being William F. Buckley Jr., that he captivated people who otherwise would have despised someone who did much to move the United States politically to the right from the early 1950s until his death in 2008. But even liberals had to laugh when Buckley, asked whether he slouched in his chair as host of the TV program “Firing Line” because he couldn’t think on his feet, drawled, “It is hard . . . to stand up . . . under the weight . . . of all that I know.”  

One can be ” a gifted polemicist, best-selling novelist, sesquipedalian speaker, television star, political candidate, yachtsman, harpsichordist, wit and bon vivant”  if one is born to wealth and has an aspiration to change the world, with an assist from what appears to be an ego the size of his aspirations, and the time to indulge your interests, while not having to earn a living. Mr. Buckley never faced the challenge of that life question and perhaps he was as special as he believed himself to be. This seems to pass by Professor Kabaservice as he takes a tumble while genuflecting in front of the alter to the great Mr. Buckley.

One of the myths of the American nation is that of the self-made man, it is one of those bedrock beliefs, in the ability of all, no matter their circumstance to make good. Does Mr. Buckley fit in that mould, even if a bit ackwardly? He was self-made in his ideosyncratic personae but was he as special as his self-concept? He was a propagandist who paid to produce a magazine and a television show and he engaged in that  non-stop campaign that only ended with his death. Another stock character in the American story is the sycophantic public intellectual who surrenders his critical capacities in the interest of cultivating the powerful. Although Professor Kabaservice does not seem to fit that category of public intellectual, perhaps he has been led by personal affection for Mr. Buckley, to his eccessively complementary stance. He is critical of the shortcomings of the biography itself but not of the the man William F. Buckley Jr., he treats him as poltitically off limits, indeed as some sort of political saint. While Mr. Buckley  struck me, as on almost every occasion, unctiously self-congatulatory, even rather repulsively smug, except in his last television interview when he said that he regretted not supporting the Civil Rights Bill, a very surprising moment indeed.

Political Observer